Until the Curtain Falls
by circleofstars
Summary: Dean and Sam find themselves adrift in the mad world of the theatre, where Dean finds himself in competition with an insane genius, and must work out what's happening before he gets his neck stretched.
1. Act One

**Until the Curtain Falls**

**Chapter One**

_**Stranger than you dreamt it**_

'Who was that?'

'You'll never believe… it was a job. Someone who got our number from a friend of a friend of a friend…'

'And…'

'At a theatre. Some ghost leaving notes, singing in the shadows. Dropped some scenery on a woman halfway through a rehearsal of _Hannibal _and nearly killed her'

'Of what?'

'_Hannibal._ In the middle of a third-act aria.'

'Huh?'

'It's an opera, Dean.'

Dean seemed to absorb this for a few seconds, and then shook his head. 'No, I'm not going. What else have we got?'

'Why the hell not?'

'Sam, they're actors. So they're all insanely superstitious and over-dramatic, and they're probably making it up.'

'Come on, Dean! You've been driving me crazy. You're restless: you need a gig to keep your mind occupied. There's definitely something going on in this theatre.'

'But… opera? Come on, Sam, don't even pretend you're not out of your depth here…'

'Why don't you want to check it out? You were crying out for something to do, half an hour ago…'

'Well, I don't want to do this.'

'Dean, it's not going to require any knowledge of opera. Anyway. We know about ghosts…'

No response.

Sam sighed wearily, and tried another tack. 'Have you seen… her?' he asked softly, turning the laptop around to show the picture which accompanied the article he had pulled up while they had been talking. 'She's a witness. Maybe she'll be attacked next, and think what a waste that'll be to the world…'

The girl in the picture was a Swedish soprano, with delicate features and thick, dark curls. Her wide eyed innocence was threaded with a dangerous passion which seemed to shine out of her eyes with all the dramatic intensity of the theatre. Dean's eyes went wide.

He tried to sound as reluctant as possible. 'Yeah... all right then. I suppose… couldn't hurt to take a look…'

Sam raised an eyebrow. 'Yeah, I bet,' he responded wryly.

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_**Why have you brought me here?**_

The theatre was like none other that either Winchester had seen in their lives. It was vast and gaudy, wildly ornate, in milky stone, curled and fashioned into elaborate scrolls and serene angels. The building's impressive façade dominated the small square it opened onto, and it seemed to be an import from a previous age. The Impala looked strangely incongruous, parked in front of such a building.

Inside, it was no better. Dean glanced awkwardly over at Sam and was satisfied to notice that his little brother didn't look any more at ease than he himself felt. He hovered in the doorway, taking in the golden staircase and plush scarlet carpets with a dismayed expression.

'Monsieur Winchester? Thank goodness. I thought we were going to have to cancel…'

A small, moustachioed man in a flamboyant maroon suit hurried down the stairs towards them. Despite the _monsieur, _his accent had only faint traces of French in it. He was accompanied by a tall, thin man, also moustachioed, who towered above him comically. They made quite the double act.

'I am Claude André, and my companion is Michel Firmin; we own the theatre. I assume you are here about our… opera ghost,' the small portly one breathed the last words in a ridiculous stage whisper, hunching his shoulders slightly as though he was imparting some great secret.

Dean blinked, smiled, and nodded with what he hoped was polite enthusiasm.

'It's caused us terrible trouble. Insists that we cast a young chorus girl as lead soprano… completely mad, of course, we can't do that. But then he goes and attacks Signora Giudicelli, and then she refuses to sing. Fearful for her life! We'll be ruined!'

_Nod and smile…_

'And this is… a spirit?' Sam asked, with every semblance of professionalism. Dean was drifting along with the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck in a play where he was the only actor without a script.

'Oh, yes, indeed. Signora Giudicelli is very upset.'

'Because the ghost thinks the other chick sings better than her?' Dean hazarded, trying to regain his grasp of the conversation.

'Well, quite. She has threatened to leave altogether… And then last night Miss Daaé disappeared, too. I don't mind telling you, Monsieur, I thought we'd have to cancel for a moment there. Ruined!'

_Sam, he's insane, let's escape while we can! _

'Miss Daaé… is she the chorus girl you mentioned?' Sam asked, in such an efficient voice that Dean glanced over to see whether his little brother was taking notes.

'Yes, yes, indeed. Of course, she's returned, just this morning. And won't tell a word of what happened! It's all a complete mess, but we heard on the grapevine that you were the men for the job, where ghosts are concerned.'

Sam smiled politely, and Dean attempted to school his features to a similar expression, but his wide eyed confusion gave his grin a manic cast. The outspoken little man seemed to pepper his conversation with theatrical jargon and dramatic exclamations, so that the sense of what he was saying was difficult to decipher.

'This evening is the opening of a new opera, _Il Muto_,' the madman continued. 'Signora Giudicelli has agreed to sing the lead role, that of the Countess, and the scenery is secured. Our lighting engineer, Joseph Buquet, will remain in the Gods throughout the performance to make sure we don't have another disaster. But if you two could find and dispose of this spectre, we'd all be much obliged, and we can return to business as usual. Which, in Monsieur Buquet's case, involves whisky, seducing the chorus girls, and rarely bringing the lights up at quite the correct time.' He grinned, as though that explained everything.

'Do you know anything of the nature of the ghost?' Sam asked, in his note-taking voice.

'Only that he sings, and has a strong attachment to Mademoiselle Daaé,' shrugged André. 'I suggest you search the theatre. Speak to Miss Daaé. But I would appreciate it if you would be… discreet.'

'Of course,' Sam replied. Dean glared at him, irritated that his brother could so easily pretend to understand every word uttered by the insane theatre manager.

André grinned widely and nodded, satisfied. 'If you need anything…' he offered, waving a hand vaguely as he swaggered off, followed by the quieter, and clearly worried, Firmin, wringing his hands as he went.

The Winchesters were left blinking in the extravagant hallway. They exchanged glances, and Dean was pleased to confirm that Sam was, indeed, as lost as he was himself. Also to his satisfaction, Dean was the first to recover.

'I'll speak to the chorus girl, you can search the theatre,' he said quickly, in a tone which wasn't going to allow any contest from Sam. He grinned at his little brother's lack of response, and disappeared.

Sam watched him march away and sighed. He wondered how Dean managed to walk as though he knew exactly where he was going.

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_**Angel of Music**_

Dean slipped through the velvet and gold-plate corridors, cat-like and quiet, guided by instinct and guesswork. The chorus girl in question, he imagined, would be found backstage, and he concluded that the easiest way to find 'backstage' had to be by going via the stage. The auditorium was well signposted, both with actual signposts and a vast door, even more elaborate than those which heralded the other rooms.

Feeling somewhat intimidated by its excessive size, Dean cracked one portal open just enough to slip through and closed it silently behind him. He hurried between the rows of plush red seats and found stairs at one side which took him past the pit full of chairs and strangely shaped orchestral instruments. He glanced over his shoulder, and suddenly felt dizzy, a feeling like vertigo, but caused by looking up into the red eyes of a thousand luxurious seats. Shaking off the feeling, he dodged around the heavy crimson curtain, and found himself in another world entirely.

The reverse side of the flowing curtain was faded and frayed, patched and inexpertly sewn, grubby with sweat from a thousand ballerinas' nervous hands. The wood of this hidden part of the stage was scuffed by their shuffling, tremulous feet in the tense seconds before stepping into the lights. The space beyond was dimly lit, plain, untidy, cluttered with makeup, and fragments of broken costumes, whose jewels and colours looked cheap and gaudy close up in this cold light.

Dean walked carefully along the scruffy corridor, marvelling at this building which seemed so grand, which in reality was superficial, worn out and crumbling beneath its shiny gold plating. Slender creatures were flitting around in the half-light, nervous and insubstantial, dressed in drab colours, their eyes darkened with the tired, greasy remnants of last night's makeup.

Dean wasn't expecting one of the shadows to step out and confront him, but when she did he wondered why he hadn't noticed her immediately. It was the girl from the picture, and although she was dressed in drab jeans and a grey shirt, the hot embers in her eyes would have been visible a mile off. They shone out from rings of theatrical makeup, under a curtain of dark curls which crowned her head and flowed down her back. Her eyes fixed on him slowly, as though surfacing from faraway thoughts.

'Miss… Daaé?' Dean asked awkwardly, hoping he had the right one.

She frowned, then nodded.

'I'm…' Some mad impulse made him decide to go with the truth, straight out. 'I'm Dean Winchester. The managers of this place hired me to investigate the… ghost. Could I talk to you?'

At the mention of the ghost, her eyes flared with intensity. He couldn't tell whether it was fascination, fear or love, but whatever it was, it was fierce. She blinked again, and nodded mutely. He opened his mouth to form a question, but her hand shot out and gripped his upper arm with slim fingers, steering him forcefully into a side room. It was tiny, and sparsely furnished. She sat on the only chair, so Dean perched on a cabinet.

'Something terrible is going to happen tonight,' she said, staring at him with eyes that seemed to pin him to the spot. Her voice was sharp and pure; even now she seemed on the point of breaking into song.

'What? Why? What do you know?' Dean whispered urgently.

She paused. Her stare was beginning to make him uncomfortable, but he didn't look away. 'My naem is Christine. I don't know why, but I'm going to trust you. Maybe you remind me of someone from my childhood.' She smiled, but Dean wasn't sure whether the strange comment was intended as a joke. 'The ghost has been speaking to me through the walls of my room… it sounds mad but… he taught me to sing.'

'You live here, in the theatre?'

'This opera house is massive. A lot of the chorus live in the rooms at the back. It doesn't pay very well; most of us can't afford to rent an apartment.'

'How long…?'

'A couple of months. But now he's started… he wants me to sing tonight, but Carlotta is going to sing instead. And I'm afraid of what he will do…'

'Carlotta?'

'The lead soprano. Carlotta Giudicelli.'

'Oh.'

'He's… starting to scare me. I thought he was harmless, but…'

'Why didn't he scare you in the first place? A voice, in the walls of your room? Most girls would go out of their heads…'

She scowled at him for the slight on her gender, but her face quickly relaxed into concern. 'You'll think I'm crazy. He reminded me of my father, a bit, then.'

'But, now…'

'He's violent. I think he's in love with me… And, what scares me the most… is that, when I'm with him…. I feel like _I'm_ in love with _him._' She had a melodramatic turn of phrase which probably came from living in a theatre.

'What…?' That feeling of being out of his depth was creeping back. There was something mad, dramatic and poetic, something intense going on to which he couldn't comprehend because it belonged to the mad, dramatic, intense, poetic world of opera.

'When he sings… it's like he's an angel. I could get drunk on his singing… It's… I can't even describe it, but when he sings I can't think straight. And it scares me. He's powerful.'

'I don't…'

'I know. You couldn't understand. But if you heard him, then you would.'

Dean severely doubted that statement, but he said nothing.

'Will you be there, tonight?' she asked suddenly. Those eyes had him held prisoner again.

'Yes,' he promised, not without some misgivings.

'Something's going to happen. When Carlotta starts singing… none of us will be safe until the curtain falls.'

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_**Poor fool, he makes me laugh**_

Sam wandered through the gilded corridors, directionless and completely lost, out of place in these halls which had never once aspired to normality. In the middle of the day they were deserted, and seemed weird: it seemed a place which would come alive at night, but was sleeping, dormant, in the daytime. It occurred to him that he shouldn't really be surprised that it was haunted. A building like this would be incomplete without a ghost.

The EMF meter he held, trying to be inconspicuous, clutched against his jacket, was silent, however. He sighed in resignation: he knew this charade well. Perhaps this evening, the supernatural activity would be livelier.

The building was like a shining, colourful labyrinth, and Sam's navigation of it was based entirely on guesswork. He realised he was lost quite early on, but wasn't willing to admit it to himself, or to any passer-by who might have been able to help him.

He decided eventually that he would investigate the levels above the stage from which the scenery had fallen the previous day, causing all the uproar and intrigue in which the theatre was currently submersed. By his reasoning, that must be upwards from where he was now, so he ascended every set of stairs which presented themselves.

As he climbed past the highest of the signposted 'circles', which he took for levels of seating, he began to notice that the golden plating was peeling off the walls, and a strip of dusty flooring was visible through the carpet in the centre of the corridor, a gulley worn by hundreds of hasty feet. This was the part of the theatre inhabited by the underworld creatures who lived here by veiling reality on a stage, not to the affluent public who thronged here every night in their fur and diamonds. The difference was palpable.

At the end of the narrow corridor, a door led Sam out into a dark space full of wires, pulleys ropes and narrow, precarious walkways which swung dangerously above the void. Down below, the polished boards of the stage shone brightly, reflecting the vivid artificial lights directed down on them from up here. The Orchestra pit was visible as a bizarre aerial picture, and the first few rows of the stalls. Looking down at the scene from such an angle made the world sway around Sam's eyes.

Ahead of him, rolled canvases suspended on ropes indicated that this was what he had been searching for: the 'Gods' from which the scene backing had fallen in yesterday's rehearsal onto Signora Giudicelli's outraged head.

A figure hulked out of the shadows. 'Who are you?' it demanded, in a rough voice edged with the slurs of whisky.

'Sam Winchester,' he replied.

The apparition scowled. Apparently that wasn't sufficient answer for his question.

'André and Firmin hired me and my brother to sort out your… uh…' He wondered how best to phrase it.

'Opera ghost,' supplied the man, his voice softening slightly, although Sam wasn't sure whether this was caused by friendliness or inebriation. It seemed to be a mixture of the two. The man held out a wavering hand and announced, 'Joseph Buquet.'

Sam shook. 'Can you tell me anything about the ghost?' he asked, hesitantly. He quickly regretted asking, realising that the mildly inebriated Joseph Buquet was a gossip, and a lover of gothic intrigue.

'Well they say his skin's like… old yellow parchment. A great black hole serves him as the nose that-,' he lowered his voice dramatically '-never grew. You must be always on your guard, young Monsieur Winchester, or he will catch you with his… _magical lasso_.'

Sam wanted to laugh, but schooled his face to neutral interest and nodded soberly.

'You'd be well advised to keep your hand at the level of your eyes when you're around the theatre at night. Means the damn thing can't tighten round your throat.'

Sam nodded politely.

'He's a consummate musician, and he hopes to revive this place, at any cost. And he's in love with young Mademoiselle Daaé. But then, who wouldn't be?' He laughed, and Sam shuddered at the thought of this old man's fantasies concerning the singer. 'Have you seen her?' He blew out air through his cheeks, shaking his head at Sam as if in awe of Miss Daaé's beauty. Sam had only seen a picture, but he had seen enough to know that she was stunning.

'So you think he's just trying to shock the theatre into… improving?' Sam asked, trying to keep the doubt out of his voice.

'Yes, he thinks it's lost its edge,' Buquet agreed. His tone had changed: earlier, he had seemed to be speaking of a monstrosity, now he sounded like he was explaining the opinions of an old friend and drinking companion.

'Right…'

Buquet nodded seriously.

'Well, Mr Buquet, my brother and I will be here tonight to see how it stands... we'll be grateful if you can keep an eye out.'

'I'll be up here all the way through. It makes a great viewpoint.'

Sam glanced down again at the stage, a vertigo-inducing distance below their feet.

'Thank you.'

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_**Prima Donna **_

Dean itched awkwardly at his overly formal attire as he stepped into the box which André had arranged to leave empty for him and Sam to watch the performance in private. It had a shiny number five nailed to the door, and its interior was spacious and was decorated, like the whole 'front of house' area of the theatre, in red velvet and gold plating. It was like a small room with a missing wall: a balcony looking out into the auditorium.

Neither of the Winchesters had ever been to the theatre before: a lifetime's hunting had left little time for pantomimes and _Peter Pan_, and sitting in the opera house felt a little like being dropped into this mad world at the deep end: surely, as newcomers to theatre, they ought to start off with a Miller play, or a Broadway musical: something a little less incomprehensible than opera.

Dean was in a bad mood: he claimed that he couldn't concentrate on hunting when trussed up in what he termed 'stupid damn clothes', and despite Christine's attraction, he wasn't looking forward to the opera. Sam was, or at least seemed, a little more comfortable with the situation, but he was restless. André and Buquet had shown such a flair for all things dramatic that he suspected their belief in the ghost was just wishful thinking.

The lights dimmed without warning, and the orchestra, hidden in their pit, struck up a lilting melody. Dean grimaced, wondering how long he'd have to listen to Metallica to recover from two hours of classical music.

The heavy curtains swooped gracefully upwards, revealing an elaborate set and a tall woman, heavily made up and extravagantly dressed, who opened her mouth to emit a wavering, high pitched shriek, which was followed by the orchestra down a scale until it became apparent that this was intended to be a tune. The brothers exchanged glances. It was going to be an interesting evening.

The woman, whom they assumed must be the infamous Carlotta Giudicelli, was joined on stage by a trio of manically grinning singers, dressed in pastel-coloured Georgian costumes, and a slender young man, also in period costume, who was apparently playing her lover.

Frowning, Dean looked more closely at the young man, and it occurred to him that the long, dark ponytail hanging down his back and the graceful curving shape of his body were familiar. Then he turned, and he realised that it was Christine. He felt a surge of irritation that the stunning young woman had been cast as the silent pageboy to Carlotta's warbling countess. Then, as his anger subsided, he realised that the ghost's attack had been for precisely this reason.

A booming voice interrupted his thoughts, and he realised with a jolt that it did not belong to the performance. The music altered and died, and Carlotta and Christine stared upwards as the voice filled the auditorium.

'Did I not instruct that box five was to be kept empty?' it demanded. Dean felt a chill, and rose halfway to his feet. The voice faded, and after a few seconds, the orchestra gathered their frayed nerves and struck up again, joined quickly by Carlotta's piercing voice.

Not being an expert on opera, Dean couldn't really tell whether she sung well or badly, but Carlotta's voice was loud and clear, covering what seemed a vast range of notes. However, she filled her song with trills and extravagant additions of her own. She hit a high note, and her voice swelled to a shattering crescendo, but then abruptly faded into a deafening croak. Dean frowned, and glanced at Sam, next to him, who shrugged. Carlotta's face told them that the croak had not been intended. Suddenly looking nervous, she opened her mouth again to sing and produced only a hoarse cry. She stared around the stage, horrified, her narrowed eyes glaring suspiciously at Christine, who kept her frantic eyes on the ceiling, searching for something only she would recognise.

Carlotta's golden throat emitted one final croak, and then she wilted, and gave out a moan of horror as she fled the stage in hysterics. Somebody, probably the ever-helpful Buquet, had the presence of mind to release the curtains, and they swung down to hide the chaotic scene. The Winchesters exchanged glances, wondering if they had witnessed a childish practical joke, or an action of the opera ghost.

André and Firmin, with their matching moustaches, appeared from between the curtains, looking harassed. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' André announced, with a flourish, 'the performance will continue in a few minutes time, when the part of the countess will be played by Miss-,' he reached an arm between the curtains and yanked Christine into view '-Daaé! In the mean time, we shall be giving you the ballet from Act three of tonight's performance.' He grinned nervously at the audience, and threw a grimace towards Sam and Dean, who shrugged. He then glared dangerously down in to the orchestra pit. 'Maestro,' he added, _sotto voce_, 'the ballet. Now!'

The curtains swung open to reveal a group of young women, swaying and leaping in time to gentle music. The audience settled down into their seats, sighing. The Winchesters leant forward in their seats, searching the theatre desperately with their eyes for some sign of the ghost. On stage, the dancers spun and leaped faster and faster.

Leaning out over the edge of the balcony and twisting round to look upwards, Sam caught a glimpse of movement up in the Gods, Buquet's kingdom of swinging ropes, wires and pulleys, and precarious walkways, far above the stage.

'Dean,' he whispered. 'There's something up there… I'm going to look. Can you find Miss Daaé? I'm not sure it's a good idea to go on with the show.'

Dean nodded, and together they slipped out of the box, hurrying off in different directions.

Dean sped down the corridors towards the wings at the side of the stage, and collided with André, who was waddling in the other direction at great velocity.

'Mr André?' he said breathlessly. 'Sam saw something above the stage. We're not sure it's safe to go on with the show…'

'Monsieur Winchester, clearly you are not a regular patron of the theatre. _The show must go on._ Buquet's got it all under control, I made sure. He's not even been drinking tonight…'

Unsatisfied, and concerned for the safety of the fascinating Christine, Dean elbowed past the puffing theatre manager and hurried on.

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_**The Phantom of the Opera**_

Sam took the stairs three at a time, swallowing them up under his long legs, followed by the escalating sound of the music, which seemed to be getting faster and faster, more and more frantic. He burst open the door which led out into the space above the stage, and suffered another rush of vertigo, looking down at the whirling shapes of the dancers.

Before he could take in the picture before him, something moved rapidly, and a resounding shriek killed the lilting music below. Sam looked down in horror to see the bald top of Joseph Buquet's head, suspended from a rope and swinging out over the stage, among the horrified dancers. The first rows of the audience were beginning to empty as people fled in terror from the hideous sight. Sam raised his eyes to his own level again in time to see a dark shape disappear into the back of the theatre. Gaping, he looked down again, clinging white-knuckled to the doorframe to quell the rising nausea in his throat. Looking down at the knot at the back of Buquet's neck, he felt guilty for laughing at the old man earlier, when he had mentioned the magical lasso.

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_Hello! Thanks for reading the first chapter - first of two or three if this is a success. I hope you enjoyed it. This story is a change for me, and I honestly don't know how well it will work. If you hated it, let me know and I won't do it again! I'll go back to writing relatively sensible stories. lol. Whether you liked it or not, please let me know your thoughts. _

_Disclaimer: Supernatural does not belong to me, and neither does The Phantom of the Opera. And it may turn out that filching from both of them at the same time is a very silly idea. _

_circleofstars_

_xXx_


	2. Act Two

**Until the Curtain Falls **

**Chapter Two**

_**Think of Me**_

Dean burst into the wings in time to hear the snap as the rope reached its extension and bounced, causing the body of Joseph Buquet to flail and sway disconcertingly as his soul took its leave. He jerked backwards involuntarily in shock as the lilting music died and was replaced by wails of horror from the cast and audience. Chaos reigned as some of the dancers froze, staring at the swinging man with wide, numb eyes, while others fled in panic, and others trembled, and clung together, shrieking.

Dean stood behind the threadbare curtain, watching, until a small hand seized his upper arm with determined fingers, and yanked him away. He stumbled after the figure, and it took him a moment to realise that it was Christine, now dressed in the flowing white dress which had been the base for Carlotta's 'Countess' costume. Without all the frills and jewels, it was a simple dress, and Christine seemed almost like a vision, fleeing before him, but pulling him along with her with her tense grip on his arm.

'Whoa, where are we going? Won't they need us down there? Did you see what just happened…?' he demanded, reaching out with his free arm to stop her, but she wouldn't be deterred.

'It's not safe there,' she replied softly, though a slight tremble betrayed the fear in her voice.

'I know! I saw…'

'My God!' she exclaimed. 'I don't believe he's dead… Buquet was a warning,' she muttered agitatedly. Her voice revealed little remorse for the death of the lighting engineer. 'He's angry.'

'Who? The ghost… Christine slow down, what do you know?'

'Just move,' she replied. 'We'll talk when it's safe…'

'Can't we talk here?'

'He'll find us,' she replied, without stopping, dragging him up a flight of stairs in the labyrinthine backstage area.

'Where are we going…?'

She led him further and further up, until he wondered how it was that the opera house stretched up so much further on the inside than it seemed to externally. She didn't slow or pause, but pushed on upwards, beyond the open entrance leading to Buquet's realm without stopping and pressing immediately onward. Eventually, gasping for breath, they stumbled out onto a square of roof enclosed by grotesque winged gargoyles. Leaning against a bizarre statue, Christine tilted her head back and drew cold air thirstily into her lungs, then finally met Dean's confused eyes.

'You going to tell me what we're running from?' he asked. 'And why? What exactly is this…'

'Phantom,' she supplied breathlessly, and her husky voice made shivers run down his spine. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for opera, it occurred to him that he would like to hear her sing. 'He's… I don't know. But you're not safe here. Maybe it would be better if you just... if you took your brother and left…'

'What? Why… me?' he spluttered.

'Because he knows,' she answered.

Dean glared at her. 'You're not in a goddamn opera now! Just tell me why…'

'Because I like you!' she yelled, in a tone of such fierce anger that it seemed to belie her words. She took a shaky breath, and lowered her voice, withdrawing her gaze and studying her hands, which were white and shaking in the bitter night. 'Because I like you. And he knows, and he's…' she sighed, running out of eloquence. 'He'll target you, now.'

Dean gaped stupidly. 'I…' he began, and then gave up. He felt inexplicably guilty for the way he had forced her to make the admission. He searched her down turned eyes in dismay. 'Look, I…'

She turned her back on him, raising a hand to her face and fidgeting awkwardly. Silence extended between them.

'I just met you,' he offered lamely. She glared at him, and he lapsed back into silence.

'How… how d'you know?' Dean asked, his voice sounding discordant in the cold air. She rounded on him. Her incredible eyes were flashing, with anger, or fear.

'What?'

He sighed, and shook his head dumbly. 'Look, I can handle a ghost. Sam and I have done this sort of thing before. If we knew where he was buried it would be easier… but, Christine, we can deal with this ghost.'

'He's not like… Dean, I don't know… I don't think you've met anything like him before. The theatre… it's like it expands everything. Makes it more dramatic. Life's not the same, in here, as it is outside.'

'I've noticed,' Dean replied wryly, half raising an eyebrow. 'But you don't need to worry about me.'

'Dean, I've seen him. I'll never forget… He lives in the catacombs beneath the theatre. He hung Buquet because the damn opera wasn't cast to his taste. He's in love with me, Dean. We've seen what he does, when he doesn't get his own way…'

Dean wanted to tell her it would be ok, but the words sounded hollow, even in his head. He pulled her close to him and clutched her against his chest. 'We can beat him,' he murmured into her hair.

After a few moments, she pulled away from him and perched on the edge of a dais, at the foot of a statue. 'Have you got a plan?' she asked candidly, looking directly into his eyes.

'I…uh. Do you know who he was when he was alive?'

'What?'

'He's a ghost; that means he's the spirit of a person who died. Usually someone who died violently.'

'I don't know. I'm not sure if he is… a ghost. He was… solid.'

Dean blinked in surprise. _Some kind of creature, perhaps? _For some reason, foremost in his mind was an indignant exclamation, _you touched him?_

'What does he look like?'

'I don't know.'

'I thought you said you'd seen him?' Dean asked in confusion.

'He wears a mask over half his face.'

Dean frowned. 'That's weird.'

'I… I tried to take it off. I didn't see clearly, but… it looked like he was deformed in some way.'

_Could be a creature…_

There was another pause. Dean reached out and gently took her hand. She looked up and met his eyes. 'We'll work something out. I promise… You don't have to worry about me.'

She nodded without detaching her gaze from his eyes, and stepped forwards into his arms.

After a short while they pulled apart. Christine blinked. It was the same expression he had seen her wear when he had first met her: a moment of coming back to reality.

'I must go,' she said. 'They'll wonder where I am.'

Dean nodded, and followed her back down the stairs. As they made their way down the dark and grimy staircases, Dean could have sworn he heard an inhuman – but oddly tuneful – wail of anguish, coming from the roof they had just left behind.

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_**Bravo, Monsieur**_

At the following night's performance, it seemed that the inhabitants of the opera house had been cowed into obedience by the ghost's warning. The opera was cast according to his requirements, and box five was left empty, while Dean stood watching in the wings, trying not to get in the way, and Sam hovered behind a curtain in box six, looking out for the ghost's arrival. As demanded, Christine was singing the part of the Countess, while the outraged Carlotta Giudicelli took on the role of the silent pageboy.

Dean's position behind the curtain placed him close enough to see the nervousness on Christine's face through the mask of makeup. When she began to sing, he stopped watching for the ghost. There was something incredibly intimate about observing her from this hiding place, listening to her baring her soul with the music. Her voice was throbbing, intense and pure, rippling over the notes like water. Dean had been thoroughly unimpressed by opera the previous night, but still: he couldn't take his eyes off her.

Dean couldn't have said how long her song lasted for; he was too caught up in the sound. But Sam later claimed that the performance had only been in progress for a few short minutes when disaster struck. Firmin and André were outraged, after the event: they had done everything that the spirit had asked, so he had no reason to be angry. Christine and Dean knew different.

As Christine's voice rose into a crescendo, some members of the audience seemed to become distracted: a creaking sound was undercutting the music, coming from far overhead. The sound followed her voice up the scale, and then burst into a shattering crash as something came loose. In box six, Sam turned his face up to the painted heavens, and to the 'Sun' – the glittering crystal chandelier which swung precariously on its golden chain. It seemed to be growing.

The chandelier moved with increasing speed, its chain ripping through the painted woodwork of the ceiling as it fell. Christine stopped singing and stared at it in horror. The orchestra died away as the musicians leapt from their seats and dove away, hiding under the stage. Dean blinked out of his stupor and saw a ton of crystal and gold swinging towards him, beautiful and terrible. He sped out onto the stage and seized Christine by the upper arm, exactly as she had him the day before. Together they fled the stage. The cast scattered.

The chandelier hit the stage with a shattering crash. The metal rings distorted on impact, and most of the tiny light bulbs splintered. Shards of hot glass filled the air; Dean felt one sink into his back as he sprinted away. Tiny crystals, cut into polygons to give off many-faceted sparkle, broke loose and flowed across the stage. The chain whipped down from the ceiling, following its loosed burden, and coiled itself noisily onto the broken light in several aftershocks. When the last echo had died away, a deafening silence filled the auditorium: a silence which is almost impossible between such multitudes of people. For the second time in just two nights, it seemed that the show would not go on.

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_**Entr'acte**_

The following morning, a despairing André came into work, and was horrified to see that it was still not over: there was a note on his desk from the opera ghost. A note – and a score.

_Have you missed me, good Monsieur? I have written you an opera: _Don Juan Triumphant._ I advise you to comply, my instructions should be clear: remember there are worse things than a shattered chandelier. _

_A few instructions just before rehearsal starts: _

_Carlotta must be taught to act, not her normal trick of strutting round the stage. Our Don Juan must lose some weight, its not healthy in a man of Signor Piangi's age. And as for our star, Miss Christine Daaé: no doubt she'll do her best; it's true her voice is good – she knows. Though should she wish to excel, she has much still to learn, if pride will let her return to me - her teacher. _

Sighing in resignation, he called a cast meeting to discuss what seemed the next in a never ending stream of problems. He was beginning to regret buying into the opera house: he had optimistically hoped that being a patron of the arts would be relaxing and rewarding; positively stress free compared to his earlier career in the scrap metal business. It was proving to be a nightmare.

So far, he had managed to avoid being told how much it would cost to repair the damage caused by last night's disaster, but he was dreading the moment when he saw the figure written down. Opera never made any money, anyway: the extortionate price of the tickets barely covered the cost of costumes, setting, lighting… not to mention the pittance he paid to a small army of ballerinas, singers, costume designers, cleaners… He reminded himself that he needed to employ a replacement for Buquet, and groaned aloud. He told himself that it was almost certainly time to retire.

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_**All I Ask of You **_

For want of any conference rooms, meeting places, or just normal rooms in the entire opera house, André and Firmin called the cast, crew, administrative staff and the Winchesters to gather in the auditorium, where they slumped into the plush chairs, making sure to remove any lingering shards of glass from those in the first rows. The wreckage of the chandelier had been cleared away, but the scratches on the polished boards, the break in the edge of the stage, and the dents left in the gold plating were still clearly visible. Clearly, in just two performances, the opera _Il Muto_ had run its course and the theatre was unlikely to reopen until the ghost's composition was ready for the public's entertainment.

The mood was one of shock among the chorus girls and backstage workers, but both Carlotta Giudicelli and her husband Paolo Piangi, the leading baritone had arrived, sporting notes and red with fury.

'Have you seen the size of my part?' demanded Carlotta of anyone who would listen. Her conversation, and that of Piangi, was peppered with high pitched repetition of the words 'outrage' and 'insult'. When Christine entered the auditorium, white and shaky, drained of her powerful dramatic presence, Carlotta glowered at her. It had become apparent – not surprisingly, that the Phantom's _Don Juan Triumphant_ would rely largely on a star turn from Miss Daaé. 'This is all her doing,' Carlotta whispered into her husband's ear.

André, somewhat deflated from the portly gentleman who had met Sam and Dean on their arrival, but still not without theatrical flair, climbed onto the stage in order to address the assembly.

'Ladies and gentlemen. As you have no doubt noticed, the _opera ghost_ is becoming a real problem. This morning, he delivered to me the score for a new opera. The way I see it, we have no choice but to comply: I cannot afford another disaster, ladies and gentlemen. I know one should not give in to terrorist demands, but… I feel we must play his game, until such a time as we can be rid of him.' He glanced sternly at Sam and Dean, whom, he evidently felt, had so far done little to help with the situation.

'But Monsieur,' objected Carlotta vociferously, 'the Phantom, he attacked us even when we complied with 'is demands.'

Christine glanced guiltily at Dean, chewing her lip. She was pale this morning, and had barely said a word since arriving. 'I can't sing it,' she said quietly, almost as though she was hoping they wouldn't hear. Her voice, however, fell into a brief moment of quiet amidst the hubbub, and upon hearing it, the group fell silent and stared at her. She shuffled back, away from them, until she stood directly in front of Dean. She seemed to want him there as support.

'But… Mademoiselle…' André faltered, horrified. 'You have a duty.'

Dean stepped forward and spoke softly into Christine's dark hair. 'If you sing it, he's gonna come watch. We can catch him, and then you won't have to worry about him again.'

She turned imploring eyes onto him. 'I'm frightened,' she admitted. Unshed tears shone in her eyes. 'Don't make me do this…' He shook his head.

'It's your decision,' he assured her.

'But why not?' demanded André, unable to contain himself any longer. Christine ignored him, staring at Dean.

'We're not safe until he's gone,' she murmured. 'But if we play his game… he'll have something planned. He'll take me, I know. When he's near me… I can't think straight.'

'Christine… as far as we know… he might be no more than just a man.'

She almost nodded, then stopped and bit her lip. She shrugged. Anguish and confusion shone out of her eyes. 'I just want it over,' she whispered.

Dean wondered for a moment whether this signified acceptance. She nodded, against his chest. 'Don't let him take me, Dean,' she whispered. He was conscious of the assembled group's eyes on her back, and his arms, encircling her. He looked up at André and nodded. André sighed visibly in relief: one less for his list of problems.

00

The next few days saw the theatre flung into a burst of activity. Workmen were brought in to smooth over the dents in the stage, but they had to dodge around dancers and chorus members as they worked. The managers were eager to lose no time in the rehearsal of _Don Juan Triumphant. _A new, smaller and less extravagant, chandelier was hung on the painted ceiling, which was now patched but still looked less pristine than it had at first.

Reyer, the conductor of the theatre's resident orchestra, was baffled by the score André gave him. It flaunted all the laws and conventions of classical music, using rhythms and keys which had never occurred to him. The orchestra struggled with it, and the classically trained Piangi grappled with the unfamiliar notes of his part, that of Don Juan.

Meanwhile, the Winchesters scoured the areas both above and below the stage for signs which might reveal to them the identity of the Phantom. Christine remembered visiting his domain only vaguely: as she described it, she had travelled in a kind of trance, but she believed that he lived below the theatre, and that it had somehow been accessed by a tunnel which led directly from her dressing room.

Sam and Dean searched the room with their EMF meter, although Dean was becoming increasingly suspicious that the so-called Phantom of the opera was no ghost at all, but some psycho human. As Christine put it, 'he sang like an angel, but he had a very physical presence, like a man, and with a man's preoccupations.' As Dean put it, 'the son of a bitch is too crazy to be a spirit; at least they follow some sort of pattern.'

All Sam could think of as a response was, 'if you say so.'

Neither brother was particularly surprised when the EMF readings produced nothing. However, as Dean reasoned, 'the bastard can't sing through the goddamn walls unless there's a space behind the walls.' André refused to let them at the walls of Christine's dressing room with a sledgehammer ('Are you mad? Do you think I enjoy paying damages?') so they found themselves on hands and knees, studying every inch of the walls, skirting boards and doorframes.

Through almost a week, the Phantom put in no appearance. He seemed to be waiting, with everyone else, for the opening night. Despite his apparent absence, Christine's anxious eyes sought him in every shadow. The night before the opera was due to open, he found her.

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_**Wandering Child**_

Sam and Dean had taken rooms in the theatre, for the sake of convenience and to save money. The room was small, dark and cell-like, but they had stayed in worse and paid for it, too, so it didn't seem too bad a deal. The theatre was filled with disconcerting noises in the dark: creaks and moans which they put down to its being an old building, but occasional murmurs which sounded disturbingly tuneful. The last night before the new opera was due to open, Dean woke in the small hours without really knowing what had startled him from his dream.

He sat up in the narrow bed, glancing over to see that Sam was still sprawled out and snoring softly on the other side of the cell. He strained his ears, and caught drifts of what could have been wind, but sounded too mellow, too deep, and too melodic. A second later, he was trying to convince his doubting mind that he had imagined the sound, that he was paranoid from living for too long in this crazy place. He sat unnaturally still for a full minute, listening to the silence.

He was about to go back to sleep when he heard a creak, like a floorboard under a furtive foot, directly outside his door. He jerked upright again and listened for a second as the footsteps receded. Silently, he stood up, slipped into his jeans and crept to the doorway in time to see a slender back disappear around the corner at the end of the hall. He hurried after the figure, unsure what had aroused his interest, but following instincts which had served him well in the past.

When he reached the corner, the figure was only a short distance in front of him, and he recognised it instantly.

'Christine?' he hissed. She didn't turn. 'Christine!' he repeated, louder. Nothing. She kept walking – sleepwalking? He had heard that it was dangerous to wake a sleepwalker, so he was reluctant to touch her. He followed her.

She led him out of the opera house by a back door, into a narrow alleyway, and he followed her through the freezing streets in the grim, cold dawn light. He shivered: it was way too cold to be outside in just jeans and a t-shirt. Ahead of him, Christine seemed not to notice the cold despite her thin camisole. She kept walking, oblivious to all around her. The streets were all but deserted at this hour (especially in the theatre district, where the artists lived almost nocturnally), but a few early risers were out. A tall man, swathed in a dark coat to protect him from the cold, turned his head to stare at Christine, out in her nightwear on such a bitter morning.

Dean maintained a distance of maybe ten yards between himself and Christine, wondering if her sleepwalking would lead him to a clue which might help him unravel part of the story of the opera ghost.

The road continued out into a less densely inhabited area of the city, and Christine finally turned off through the ornate wrought-iron gate of a misty cemetery. Dean frowned, and followed without a sound.

She strode between the graves with an air of purpose, as though she had now decided exactly where she was going. Advancing within a few metres of his quarry, Dean realised that she was humming under her breath. It was the same tune he had heard in the sleeping theatre, but it hadn't been her voice before. She finally stopped, staring down blank-eyed at a grave. Circling round behind her, Dean read the name: Auguste Daaé – her father.

'Christine?' he muttered, quietly. It was getting seriously cold. She made no response, and didn't seem to even hear him.

Suddenly, as he watched, she looked up from the grave, like a rabbit startled by a noise in the distance. He strained his ears, and then he could hear it, too: far off, but coming closer, the same melody he had heard in the theatre and that she had been humming as she walked. He spun round, looking for the singer.

The graveyard was deserted, except for the two of them standing close together before Daaé's grave. Then, turning back to her, he saw it: a figure, swathed in a black coat, eyes shining in dark sockets through a pale mask. He was standing some distance away, his eyes locked with Christine's. His singing was growing in strength, and Dean could almost understand her state of entrancement. The 'Ghost' had a voice like no other, haunting, full but also hollow, sweet and bitter, gentle and shaking with intensity, all at once. Looking from one to the other, he could see that Christine and the singer were locked into private worlds in which they existed solely for one another.

Christine stepped forward and advanced slowly towards the man who had been haunting the opera house. His singing took on an insistent tone, and he beckoned her still closer. Obediently, she kept up her steady progress towards his waiting arms. Alarm bells rang in Dean's mind.

'Wait, Christine!' he implored her. She was deaf to his pleas. The ghost, who up until now had utterly ignored Dean's presence, looked up and grinned at him triumphantly. His mouth had a crooked cast, as though stretched at one end, and it gave his smile a sinister edge.

A sense of urgency took hold of Dean. He felt that it would be a grave mistake to let her sleepwalk into the Phantom's arms. He leapt towards her, uncomfortably close to the singing Phantom, and grabbed her by the arm. She shook his touch away, and kept moving without even glancing away from the Phantom's face. It seemed that she would respond to nothing but the masked man's singing.

In desperation, Dean attempted one final tack: if she responded to singing... maybe she would respond to his. Unable to think of a suitable song at such short notice, he simply sang her name, in two descending notes. '_Christine…'_

She turned to him with a gasp, more like someone surfacing from underwater than waking from sleep. She glanced around her in surprise and leapt back against Dean with a small yelp of horror when she saw the Phantom standing over her. Dean stumbled backwards, holding her awkwardly against him.

When he lost his control over her, the Phantom abruptly stopped singing and let out a yell of frustration. He reached beneath his coat, and in one fluid motion drew out a long, elegant sword.

Wide eyed, Dean stumbled back further, pulling Christine with him and pushing her round behind him.

All he could think was _Shit…_

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_I'm sorry that Sam was a bit redundant in this chapter. He will become more useful in the fianl installment. _

_Thank you very much to all those who reviewed the last chapter. There will be one more… as soon as I can manage, but not until after New Year, I'm afraid. I'd be really grateful to have feedback on this chapter. _

_I know this story's not everyone's ideal. I promise to write something more sensible next. :D _

_To those of you who are familiar with The Phantom of the Opera – I hope you don't mind that I missed out the masquerade. I couldn't really make it fit into this scenario. The writer who will tackle Sam and Dean at a masked ball is braver than I am: )_

_xxx_


	3. Finale

**Until the Curtain Falls**

**Chapter Three**

_**Twisted every way…**_

The bright blade drew his gaze like iron filings to a magnet. It was long and heavy, and moving frighteningly quickly in the madman's pale hands. Dean ducked clumsily as it whipped out towards him with the speed and grace of a cat's slender tail. It missed him by a hair. As he straightened, a white fist lurched into view and he ducked again, awkwardly, sideways – not quick enough – the fist hit his shoulder with powerful and undeniably solid force. Dean was spun round, and he stumbled over part of a fallen gravestone as his feet struggled to catch up with the movement. He hit the hard frozen ground painfully with his out-flung wrists and cursed.

'I should have known he was too friggin' crazy to be a ghost…' he grumbled as he pushed himself laboriously upright.

Christine yelped from somewhere nearby, and Dean spun round in alarm, halfway to his feet, to see the long blade whipping out towards him again. He lurched away, and the tip caught his upper arm sharply. He took several long strides, putting distance between himself and his assailant, buying time while his frantic eyes searched the ground for something he could use to defend himself. He heard rapid footsteps keeping pace, close behind him.

He stooped and grabbed a half-frozen dead branch, and swung round in time to meet the sword's swing with the feeble weapon. The blade was slowed; it caught in the hardened wood. But the stick was made brittle, not strong, by the cold, and it promptly snapped. Dean sucked in breath nervously, throwing himself down behind a gravestone as the next blow fell mightily towards him from above. He watched dispassionately as the heavy metal clove through the space where his head had been and rang out dully as it hit the cold stone. Beneath the mask, a twisted mouth snarled down at Dean as he rolled away and scrambled to his feet, again searching desperately for a weapon.

Another yelp warned him just too late that the sword was heading his way again – he threw himself forwards onto the ground, but felt the sharp point tangle briefly in the skin of his back as he fell.

He landed heavily on his stomach, stretched full length on the freezing ground. He cursed himself, again, for coming out in the snow half dressed and unarmed, and winced as he lifted his head. Then his eyes went wide, and he snatched at the object lying in front of him, then rolled over and sat up in one movement, swinging his new weapon to meet the sword with a ringing crash.

It was a broken bar from the aged wrought-iron fence which surrounded a nearby grave. It seemed to have absorbed the cold so much that its jagged metal was almost painful against his hand, but it held against the Phantom's blow. It would do.

He got his feet under him and clumsily lurched upright, meeting another blow with his improvised weapon as he rose. Now that he finally had the means to fight back, the attack seemed to redouble; it took all he had to defend from one blow after another, coming at him in swift succession from every side.

He gave ground reluctantly until he found cold stone pressing against his back. He hissed air through his teeth nervously: sword fighting wasn't really his forte, and now he had nowhere to run.

His opponent's blade crashed down towards him again from above, and he met it with his fence-post, holding both ends of the bar to make an effective horizontal barrier. For a few moments, the combatants were still, growling at one another as each tried to push against the other's weapon. Dean was the first to run out of patience. Using the tomb behind him for leverage, he leant back and kicked out, propelling the madman away from him with his foot.

The Phantom tripped, and fell onto his back on the ground. Dean swiftly took advantage of his small victory, and pinned his assailant down with an iron bar in the throat. Breathing heavily, he gathered his strength for the final blow, grateful that he could save Christine from the obligation to sing _Don Juan Triumphant_ that evening. As that thought struck him, her voice filtered into his consciousness.

'No…' she pleaded. 'Don't'

He glanced up at her in surprise.

'What? Why not?'

'He's… I lo..'

'No, you don't,' he cut her off before the words could leave her lips. He glared at her.

A remembered phrase echoed in his mind, this time in Sam's voice. _We don't kill people_. Dean would argue that calling this freak a person was a stretch, but he knew Sam's philosophy was nonnegotiable on the subject. He relaxed his grip on the iron bar and stepped back. Before the Phantom could move, he seized Christine by the arm and steered her rapidly away, out of the cemetery, and back to the opera house.

He knew he would regret this decision this evening, when the curtain fell on the new opera.

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_**Overture**_

Sam was only half awake when Dean traipsed wearily back into the small room. He blinked, surprised to see his brother, and slightly guilty for not having noticed he was missing until he returned. He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

'Where have you been?'

Dean glanced at him with tired eyes, and flopped down to sit on the edge of his bed.

'Prima Donna took a romantic stroll with her crazy stalker boyfriend at four in the morning,' he explained grumpily.

Sam blinked in confusion, trying to clear his head of sleep.

'What?' he asked blearily. Then he noticed the trace of scarlet on Dean's shirt, and was fully awake in seconds. 'Dean, what happened? Are you ok?' His brother was shivering violently.

'Just cold…' he muttered.

'You're bleeding,' Sam pointed out, almost accusingly.

Dean nodded placidly, seeming to miss the angry tone in his brother's voice. 'Bastard had a friggin' sword. In the 21st century, for Christ's sake…'

Sam frowned, and approached his brother, clucking over the red stains on his t-shirt like a mother hen. Dean shook him off.

'Sam, I'm fine. They're just scratches. 'Course, I'd be _more_ fine if you'd let me kill the damn thing, then we wouldn't have to watch another opera tonight…'

Sam glared at his brother, irrationally annoyed with him for sneaking out unprepared for a sword fight in the snow. It turned out that Dean was right, though: they were just scratches.

'Why didn't you wake me up?'

'I wasn't really expecting…' Dean waved his hands in a vague gesture, not bothering to find the words. Sam nodded: maybe it was a brother thing – words weren't always necessary.

After a pause, Sam bit his lips and met his brother's eyes. 'So we still have to go to the opera tonight, huh?'

Dean nodded sadly. 'Yup.'

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_**Down Once More**_

Dean tapped his fingers tensely against the safety rail at the edge of box five, breathing in deeply as the lights dimmed and Firmin's nervous voice filled the auditorium, asking the audience to turn off their mobile phones.

Sam, beside him, scanned the audience once more as the disappeared into shadows. They seemed restless, as though they had picked up on the anticipation which gripped the cast, crew and staff of the theatre. As the lights went down, muttering broke out and quieted again. None of the assembled opera-lovers had ever heard of this _Don Juan Triumphant_, and they were intrigued. The composer's name was stated simply as O.G., with no date, or any other indication of the source of this new score. None of them knew what to expect.

Not even the cast.

The curtain swung up, and jarring, unfamiliar chords filled the theatre. The audience rustled disapprovingly in their seats. This wasn't what they'd come for.

The chorus sang briefly, and then Ubaldo Piangi stepped forth, cloaked and masked, as Don Juan. Contrary to the note's instructions, he had gained weight in the brief time that the opera had been in rehearsal, but his voice was rich and powerful. With a crescendo, he introduced 'Aminta,' the female lead, and then disappeared behind a curtain as Christine floated onto the stage with a lilting melody in her throat.

In box five, the Winchesters leaned forward. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. They perched on the edges of their seats, tensed for action. Sam was straining his eyes in the darkness, following the show's action in the script, in the hope that he would notice swiftly if anything went wrong.

Tonight, Christine's pure, strong voice was threaded with a delicate trembling. Her eyes were wide and uncertain. Turning slowly in a dramatic gesture, she sought Dean's eyes in the audience for reassurance, and he smiled encouragingly at her.

Don Juan re-entered from behind the curtain at the back of the stage. Sam tugged urgently at his brother's sleeve.

'What?' Dean hissed. In the next box, a middle aged woman turned her glare on the Winchesters. They ignored her.

'That's not the same person,' Sam whispered.

'So?'

'It's supposed to be the same character, you idiot. That's not… wide enough to be Piangi.'

Dean glanced at the stage. The cloaked and masked figure advanced on Christine, singing softly to a throbbing tango-beat. Christine's eyes were fixed on him adoringly. Either her acting was better than he had given her credit for, or –

'Let's go,' he murmured, slipping out of his seat and opening the door with great care. Sam followed him out into the stark lights of the corridor. Even out here, they could hear the powerful voice, raised triumphantly in duet with Christine.

The Winchesters ghosted through the deserted corridors until the velvet and gold plating faded to wood and grime. Mid-performance, the backstage area was a hive of utterly silent activity. Dancers practised, chorus members touched up their makeup; dressers seized passing singers to adjust their extravagant sequin-encrusted costumes. As there was no barrier between this area and the stage itself, the whole operation was completely soundless. It was bizarre, like a film played on mute. Dean and Sam dodged prima donnas as they wove through the mêlée to stand in the wings. This area, too, was crowded, but the silence here tasted of tension. They weren't the only ones to have noticed that _Don Juan_ was no longer Piangi.

The Winchesters hovered uncertainly in the wings. Part of Dean wanted to rush out there and drag Christine away from the Phantom and his hypnotic singing, but another part of him was reluctant to run out in front of an audience who seemed unaware, so far, that anything was amiss. It might have been stage fright, or it might have been living in a theatre too long, and catching the contagious superstition that, whatever happens, the show must go on.

However, it seemed that the Phantom himself did not subscribe to that philosophy. The duet came to a rousing finish, and Christine's voice fell away. She watched, entranced, as he sang a few lines of a lilting melody which, Sam pointed out determinedly, were not in the score. As the madman's voice rose spectacularly to fill the theatre, Christine calmly stepped forwards and pulled the mask from his face.

The audience came alive with shocked gasps and screams. His face was white and hard and ridged like a skull, and the skin of one cheek was pulled tight by scars, lifting his upper lip and making his mouth asymmetrical. Even after a lifetime of spirits and demons, the distortion of this human face came as a shock to the Winchesters. For the audience, and the curious cast members hovering in the wings, he was frighteningly hideous.

Christine stared calmly up at him, and Dean remembered that she alone had seen this before. The monster seized her around the waist, and the next second, they were both gone. A second shockwave washed through the auditorium.

Shocks always come in threes. As the second wave broke, a young ballerina reached out and pulled the cord to release the backstage curtain. Unwittingly, she revealed the bloated body of Piangi, swinging gently on the end of a rope. Her scream pierced the eardrums of every person within two hundred yards of her.

Wincing, Sam turned to his brother. 'We've got to find them…' he muttered urgently, waving a hand at the stage to make it clear who he meant.

Dean nodded earnestly. 'You go round the back; I'll try under the stage… apparently he lives under the theatre, so we need to go down…'

Sam nodded, and Dean immediately turned and hurried away. He called after him, and Dean spun round impatiently.

'What?'

'Keep your hand at the level of your eyes,' he warned, pointing meaningfully at Piangi's swinging body.

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_**The Point of No Return**_

Ducking through a low doorway, Dean slipped into the dusty space underneath the stage. Panicked footsteps rushed about over his head, backed by the general rumbling of shocked opera goers fighting to vacate the auditorium.

The space was full of ropes and pulleys which evidently moved the scenery around, and in some places there were steps leading up to the stage – used frequently in certain gothic operas, when characters disappeared down from the stage, into 'hell'. Dean smirked: he ought to feel right at home, here in hell. Then his expression soured. He was disgusted by how much he now knew about opera, it was indecent.

He tried to concentrate, shaking these irrelevant thoughts out of his head. He came to the point which ought to correspond with the part of the stage which Christine and her captor had disappeared from. Sure enough, there was a trapdoor above his head. It seemed that nothing in the theatre was really supernatural – it was all smoke and mirrors and superstition.

Having solved the mystery of how they had left the stage, Dean realised that he still had no idea where they had gone next. They obviously weren't still here, and as far as he could tell, the only door was the one he'd come in through. He would have seen them rush out of there, so there had to be another door somewhere.

He remembered being told that the Phantom inhabited a lair in the catacombs under the theatre, and concluded that he was looking for a way to go further down. Still standing underneath the trapdoor, he looked all around, and found nothing in the dim light. He hung his head temporarily in frustration. Then he blinked.

There was another way out. He was standing on it.

Quickly, he heaved the second trapdoor open, and lowered himself down. Landing lightly on his feet, he found himself at the top of a long staircase, which curved downwards into the dark. He sighed, and raised his arm to the level of his eyes. He felt stupid, as though he were asking permission to speak in class. He bit his lip, and started descending.

As it turned out, the staircase didn't extend as far as it seemed to. Dean estimated that he had completed a full turn, so he was directly under the two trapdoors. Then he stumbled forwards, and tripped, falling to his knees in chilled, clammy water. He threw his hands out in front of him to keep his upper body out of the water.

He stood, cursing under his breath, and started walking. The further he went, the darker it became, until there was nothing but spots of light reflected off the water, illuminating nothing other than the glassy surface of the shallow underground lake. Dean's boots filled with water and weighed him down; his feet squelched in them uncomfortably. His jeans soaked up dampness, leaving a tidemark halfway up his thighs, although the lake only reached to his knees. He had no way of knowing whether he was going the right way.

His mind was plagued with horrible images of what the Phantom might be doing to Christine. He reproached himself for having such a vivid imagination for all the sick possibilities.

The spots of light on the surface of the lake seemed to multiply, until there was a whole rash of them, and, up ahead, an ethereal glow seeped into the darkness. As he drew closer, he realised he was looking at thousands of candles, filtered through the square holes of a sort of grill. A portcullis, in fact, like the ones guarding the entrances of castles in swashbuckling movies.

Behind the grill, a bank rose out of the lake, bearing hundreds of candles and the extravagant debris of an artist's home. Among the clutter (which mostly seemed to have been stolen from the theatre, bearing the telling scarlet and gold colour scheme of the opera house), Christine and her captor were standing, several feet apart, glaring at each other, and arguing. Or, more accurately, singing at each other.

Dean gaped at them as he splashed up to the portcullis and leaned against it wearily. Then they noticed him. Christine's eyes went wide with a mixture of surprise, mixture and concern. Dean was relieved to see that she didn't seem to be in the trance-like state which his singing had sent her into before. The Phantom's glare was one of hatred and fury, condensed by his grotesque features into a nightmarish image. Dean met his eyes squarely.

'Let her go,' he said quietly.

A snarl twisted the madman's already curled lips, but he didn't react to Dean's words. He reached over and yanked a lever back. To Dean's surprise, the grill in front of him trundled upwards, allowing him to step warily under it. He swallowed nervously when it crunched back down behind him.

He turned briefly to glance at the spiked bottom of the grate sinking down into the lake, and the Phantom came up behind him, catlike and silent. Just as he was turning back to face the lair, he felt a coarse rope fall around his throat, and a soft, intense voice singing, 'Keep your hand at the level of your eyes,' to a haunting tune. He was only dimly aware of this, because his whole attention was swiftly engaged with the struggle for air as the Punjab lasso pulled tight.

He clawed at the rope, and struggled wildly, splashing in the shallow water. He was half aware of Christine's protests in the background, high-pitched and strangely tuneful. But thought was dimming as his lungs began to burn. Seconds later, he found himself lashed to the cold metal of the portcullis, with the lasso looped around a rung above his head, and the other end of the rope hanging ominously in the Phantom's long white hands. The pressure on his throat diminished enough to allow him a thin thread of air, but it wasn't enough to allow the huge gasp his lungs were pleading for.

He could hardly believe how easily he had been quelled, and by a simple human being, not even a supernatural creature. It was embarrassing. Christine was staring at him with horror and despair in her eyes. He pulled uselessly against the restraining ropes, and the noose tightened on his throat.

He heard splashing behind him, and a familiar voice calling out his name. He didn't have to turn his head to know that it was Sam.

'Dean,' Sam's voice called again, but softer this time, as though he was uncertain of the situation. He was close behind now, and Dean thought he felt his brother's fingers plucking at the ropes holding him, but then the noose jerked again, and for several seconds he could only see white light in front of his eyes, and he could even concentrate on that because he was gasping for oxygen.

'Sam, get back…' Christine's terrified voice warned, and Sam withdrew. Without turning his head, Dean couldn't be sure, but he thought his brother was still nearby.

'Let him go, you freak.' Sam's voice again, directed fiercely at the Phantom. 'He never did anything to you…'

'Sam, it's no good…' Christine again. It struck Dean as odd that the Phantom, who seemed to have control of the entire situation, was so silent.

'What do you want from us?' Sam demanded angrily, ignoring the soprano and again directing his anger straight at the Phantom.

'Sam, he can't hear you…'

'What?' Sam's anger was directed at her, now. Dean could hear him shifting nervously, somewhere close by.

Dean flicked his eyes towards Christine. Her eyes were glinting. His blurry vision and the flickering lights made it difficult to tell whether she was crying or not. 'Sam… he, uh, he can't hear you. You have to sing.'

'I have to _what_?'

'He's grown up under this opera house… he doesn't know anything else… you have to sing…'

Dean didn't need to see Sam's face to know what it looked like. He had always taken great pleasure in provoking the stunned-dormouse expression which his brother did so well.

'Sing… anything in particular?' he asked, shakily.

Christine shrugged. 'If you want him to understand you…'

Dean heard Sam huffing agitatedly. Despite the situation, he wanted to laugh so badly that it hurt.

'I… um… can you tell him…'

Luckily for Sam, it was at that moment that the Phantom ran out of patience. Unfortunately, he chose to express this by yanking on the rope so hard that Dean wondered if the freak was trying to pull his head right off.

The Phantom let rip, directing his tirade at Christine, in the throbbing tango-beat tune to which they had duet-ed on stage. There was a pleading note to his voice, and it occurred to Dean, for the first time, that the lonely ghost was in love with her. His actions were misguided, but his motives were the purest known to man. He was begging her to stay with him, to share his theatrical, gothic existence, hiding in the vaults of a gold-plate and red-velvet opera house. His whole existence was a shadow of a fake, and she alone could make it real for him. His main mistake was the way he made his request with an accompanying threat… Dean choked as the rope tightened again.

The madman's passionate singing fell silent, and for several seconds nobody moved. Christine's voice trembled slightly as she began her reply. The improvised singing seemed to come less naturally to her than to her mentor, but still, Dean was impressed. He wasn't sure, but he thought she was using the tune from a song which had been a single for Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman in the eighties. Then, absently, he wondered why he knew that.

Then all thought was suddenly extinguished from his mind. She had walked up to the madman who had kidnapped her, the same madman who wanted very much to strangle Dean to death and who was doing quite well so far. She walked up to him, seized his deformed face between her hands and kissed him, full and passionately on the lips.

When she finally pulled away, there was another moment of shocked silence. She stared at the Phantom, and her eyes spoke of concern, with a hint of that intoxicated look which she had worn in the graveyard. He stared back at her, unreadable, and the Winchesters stared at the pair of them. The silence was broken by the Phantom's anguished sob. He dropped the rope, and raised both hands to his face, turning away.

Christine watched him, and her eyes welled up with pity. After a moment, she took a loud, steady breath, and hurried over to Dean.

'I'm so sorry you got pulled into this…' she murmured in his ear, yanking frantically at the ropes binding him. Dean swallowed air like a diver surfacing. He shook the remaining ropes off.

'That's ok,' he replied hoarsely. 'I'm sorry I was so useless…'

She tilted her head as if to silently agree that he had been useless and accept the apology. Then she smiled. Dean turned wearily, to see Sam leaning against the grate, relief written across his face.

Christine cast a wary glance back, to where the Phantom sat, carefully pulling back the lever which would lift the portcullis. His devastated, ashamed eyes met Christine's for a second. 'Go,' he whispered.

She and Dean ducked under the grate in silence, and waded away, towards the stairs, with Sam in tow.

'At least I wasn't as useless as Sam,' Dean muttered in her ear.

'I'd say about even,' Christine replied, grinning at the younger Winchester's indignant expression. 'It's a shame, though. I wanted to hear him sing…'

'Yeah, me too… I'm not sure I've _ever_ heard…'

'You're not going to, Dean!'

'Why not? You can't be that bad… Just sing…'

'No! No way…'

'Sam… please? For me? Ignore him, pretend he's not here…'

'Hey!'

'No. You can't make me…'

0000000000000000000000000000

_I think I'll leave it there. It's a very silly story, but I hope you enjoyed it. I was going to have another scene, but I felt that that was a good place to leave it. I don't think we've ever heard Sam sing on the show, though Dean has a few times… _

_I used the swordfight from the film version of Phantom of the Opera, because I think the version of events from the show is too inherently theatrical to work on film, or in writing. And I suppose the ending was a bit more like the film as well. But I left the chandelier crash in the middle!! Because although the film is good, nothing comes close to Phantom on stage. Nothing! _

_xxx_


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